Thursday, January 24, 2013

It’s not unusual, not at all, but it happened again, some
idiot crossing the double yellow stripe, heading straight at me. I’m sick of
it.

Between the humble abode and downtown Sand Springs lies a section
of narrow two lane highway with a couple of 40 mph curves. Of course no one
actually slows to 40 mph, that’s understandable; this is after all, Oklahoma. But
it’s not the speed that scares the crap out of me, it’s the fact that so many
drivers cannot seem to master the simple skills of staying in their own lane as
they negotiate a curve. There is no escape route. It’s either the ditch and the
telephone poles, or a head-on collision. Not a great choice.

Of course, we know the real reason for this, don’t we? It’s
not a lack of skills. Even a reasonably sober person could accomplish the maneuver
with ease. Nope. It’s cell phones. If you watch closely as the other driver
zooms past, and I always do, he or she will be talking on their cell, driving
with one hand, a glazed look in their eyes, totally unaware of the highway menace
that they are.

Don’t believe it’s dangerous? Check out the daily paper
where they list the traffic deaths. There’s a pattern here .

·Failed to stop at intersection.

·Crossed the center line.

·Went off the side of the road and overcorrected.

Folks, you don’t make those kinds of mistakes, we’re talking
fatal mistakes now, if your eyes and attention are focused on the road ahead.

Don’t even talk to me about texting while driving. Dumb.
Dumb. Dumb.

And now, as if we didn’t have enough distractions, nearly
all the new model cars are coming out with a center dash GPS and entertainment
center. Go ahead, reach over there and scroll down through the songs you want
to hear. Type in that address. Dial up the weather satellite. Hell, Tweet
somebody. You’re only going 65-70 mph, a hundred feet a second, inside a two ton missile. What could possibly go wrong?

I’m going to tell you a story about the time I almost killed
two little boys. I tell it to everyone that will sit still for a minute. I tell
it often because I think it illustrates a point. If you’ve heard it before, you can stop here.
So long, nice talking to you.

The City of Sand Springs has something in common with San
Francisco; they are both quite hilly. The similarity ends there. It was a sunny
weekday afternoon. I was in my old pickup, going down a steadily declining
grade leading into the heart of downtown. I was in no hurry, holding at or around the
speed limit, when I came upon yet another cross street. Red octagonal stop
signs were in place to halt oncoming traffic from both right and left. The
street to my right was not only steep toward my direction of travel, but mostly
hidden from view by a good sized hill where an old house sat.

As I approached the intersection, my peripheral vision
picked up movement on my right. In one split second, there were two young boys
directly in front of me, riding double on a bicycle. The look on their faces is
a snapshot forever imprinted in my brain. Mouths open, eyes wide in total
terror, they went with their natural instinct to survive, to get as far away as
possible from the monster machine flying toward them, and tried to jump from
the bike. At one moment in time, I had two scared boys directly in front of me,
and the next instant, frantically slamming the brakes, they were gone,
disappeared, out of sight. Where were they? Under the truck? Dead? Dying? Was
there a thump? I didn’t think so but…

I jumped from the truck and ran to the front, my heart about
to jump out of my chest. The boys were getting to their feet, brushing
themselves off.

“Did you get hit? Are you hurt?”

“No, we’re fine.”

“Are you sure? If the truck touched you, I’m calling the
police and an ambulance.”

“No, we weren’t hit.” They seemed adamant about it.

“You know you blew through that stop sign don’t you.”

“Yeah,” they admitted.

And with that, they hopped back on the bike and peddled off.

An old man sitting on his front porch had seen the whole
thing and approached. “I see those two
boys do that, run that stop sign, almost every day after school. I figured, one
of these days…”

So here’s the thing, the moral of the story. If my reaction
time had been one fraction of second slower, if I had been dialing a number on
my cell phone, if had reached for a CD , or if I had had so much as a couple of
beers, those boys would be dead or seriously injured today. From a legal stand
point, I would have probably been found not guilty, circumstances like they
were. But the faces of those boys would haunt me at night for the rest of my
life.

Sure, I’ve been distracted with the very things I’m ranting
about.Drink and drive? Oh Lord, many
times. But not in a long, long while. I’ve been lucky.